Study: City’s summer jobs program reduces arrests for violence
The city’s summer jobs program reduces the odds that its young participants will get arrested for violent crimes, but doesn’t have an overall impact on their school performance or future chances of landing employment, according to a study released Thursday.
Researchers at the University of Chicago Urban Labs and University of Michigan studied the 2013 One Summer Chicago Plus program and found violentcrime arrests for participants fell 33 percent over the following year.
The violence reduction stopped growing after that year but remained significant. After two to three years, participants still had about 20 percent fewer violent- crime arrests than non- participants, the study found.
The 2013 program involved young men ages 16 to 22. They worked for six weeks in minimum- wage jobs and got training in controlling their emotions. Half the participants were referred from criminal- jus- tice agencies and half came from high- crime neighborhoods and went through the regular application process. Most were black, but a small number were Hispanic.
The participants were tracked for two to three years after they completed the program in 2013.
Overall, there wasn’t a boost in their school performance or ability to get other jobs, but a subset of participants — those who were younger, more “school- engaged,” less likely to have been previously arrested, Hispanic, and living in neighborhoods with slightly lower unemployment rates — did have improvements in those areas, according to the study.
This summer’s One Summer Chicago officially kicked off Monday. The current program offers jobs to young men and women ages 14 to 24. About 31,000 youths were expected to participate this summer starting this week through mid- August.